Niklas Möller’s research while affiliated with Stockholm University and other places

The “impossibility results” in algorithmic fairness suggest that a predictive model cannot fully meet two common fairness criteria – sufficiency and separation – except under extraordinary circumstances. These findings have sparked a discussion on fairness in algorithms, prompting debates over whether predictive models can avoid unfair discrimination based on protected attributes, such as ethnicity or gender. As shown by Otto Sahlgren, however, the discussion of the impossibility results would gain from importing some of the tools developed in the philosophical literature on feasibility. Utilizing these tools, Sahlgren sketches a cautiously optimistic view of how algorithmic fairness can be made feasible in restricted local decision-making. While we think it is a welcome move to inject the literature on feasibility into the debate on algorithmic fairness, Sahlgren says very little about what are the general gains of bringing in feasibility considerations in theorizing algorithmic fairness. How, more precisely, does it help us make assessments about fairness in algorithmic decision-making? This is what is addressed in this Reply. More specifically, our two-fold argument is that feasibility plays an important but limited role for algorithmic fairness. We end by offering a sketch of a framework, which may be useful for theorizing feasibility in algorithmic fairness.

Focusing on ‘real actions’ of ‘real people’, normative behaviourism turns facts about observable patterns of behaviour into grounds for specific normative political principles. For this reason, this way of doing normative political theory has strong political realist credentials, given its methods, values and ambitions. In fact, according to its supporters, normative behaviourism is an improvement of political realism since it solves two problems that allegedly face many realists, namely, the ‘legitimacy problem’, i.e., how we should distinguish genuine acceptance of a political system from false acceptance, and ‘the institutional problem’, i.e., how we should translate political principles into viable political institutions. In this paper, we make two claims. First, normative behaviourism does not solve the legitimacy problem encountered by realists, because its solution rests on a flawed distinction between foundational principles and ‘principles that matter’, together with a problematic use of a Humean internal reasons approach. Second, normative behaviourism does not solve the institutional problem encountered by realists, because its solution is in fact much more unfeasible than realist prescriptions, since feasibility is interpreted as mere possibility. We wind up our analysis by showing that normative behaviourism encounters new problems that realist approaches typically do not face.

In the recent debate on political normativity in political philosophy, two positions have emerged among so-called political realists. On the first ‘non-moral’ view, political normativity is understood as orthogonal to moral normativity. On the second ‘filter view’, moral norms and prescriptions may be ‘filtered through’ the realities of politics such that they are altered by politics’ constitutive features. While the former has been severely criticized, the latter has remained underdeveloped and vague. To take the debate on political normativity forward, the aim in this paper is to explore what it could reasonably mean to claim that moral norms are filtered through politics and are aligned with its constitutive features. More specifically, we explore the role of moral norms in political theory. We take our starting-point in Larmore’s work and make two claims. First, we argue against Larmore’s claim – following political realists – that because political philosophy is concerned with the regulation of basic institutions and legal-political orders, it should primarily focus on political legitimacy rather than justice and always focus on legitimacy before justice. In our view, nothing in the constitutive features of politics supports such a conclusion. Second, we argue that any reasonable political theory relies on at least one moral premise, constituted by foundational principles (or values), which are independent of a society or polity. These are more basic than political principles in the sense that they put up the normative boundary conditions for such principles.

One recent debate in political theory centers on the question of whether there is a distinctively political normativity. According to an influential view, there is a distinctive set of norms that applies specifically to political actions and decisions, which are not grounded in moral normativity. On one version of this non-moral view, political theory is grounded in epistemic normativity (and thus epistemic norms). Theorists identifying as “radical realists” insist that political theorists do not need any moral normativity (and thus moral norms), because epistemic normativity may provide action-guidance for political theory. In this article, we take our point of departure in a critical analysis of this epistemic version of the non-moral view, with the overall aim of analyzing the importance and limitation of epistemic norms in political theory. We argue that epistemic norms are necessary—since a political theory should not rely on empirical falsities—but not sufficient for a successful account in the political domain. Two claims are made: moral norms are essential in the process of political theorizing, both in the form of pre-epistemic norms and in the form of post-epistemic norms. More specifically, we contend, first, that we need moral norms to identify and justify which practices to study when conducting political theorizing, and second, that we need moral norms to tell us how to act in light of our investigation of warranted and unwarranted beliefs.

A central distinction for Jonathan Floyd is that between the traditional method of pursuing political theory conducted by mainstream theorists, which he calls ‘mentalism’, and his suggested method, so-called ‘normative behaviourism’. While the former relies on patterns of thought (e.g. intuitions, value commitments, principles or considered judgements) to justify normative theories, the latter instead relies on patterns of behaviour. Floyd argues that normative behaviourism offers an alternative methodology to mainstream mentalism, a new – and better – way of doing political philosophy. Our aim in this article is to reject this claim: normative behaviourism does not offer an alternative methodology in political theory. First, we show that normative behaviourism, contrary to Floyd’s claim, is as dependent on value premises as mainstream, ‘mentalist’ political theory. Second, we illustrate the structural similarities between normative behaviourism and mainstream political theory from a methodological standpoint by comparing the former with an influential normative theory, namely, utilitarianism.

In the last couple of years, increased attention has been directed at the question of whether there is such a thing as a distinctively political normativity. With few exceptions, this question has so far only been explored by political realists. However, the discussion about a distinctively political normativity raises methodological and meta-theoretical questions of general importance for political theory. Although the terminology varies, it is a widely distributed phenomenon within political theory to rely on a normative source which is said to be political rather than moral, or at least foremost political.

Recent years' literature on distinctively political normativity raises methodological and meta‐theoretical concerns of importance for political theory. The aim of this article is to identify and critically examine the main positions in this debate as well as to analyze problems and promising ways forward. In brief, we argue that the predominant “non‐moral view” of distinctively political normativity (i.e., the view that political normativity is independent of moral normativity), is problematic in all its three versions. Further, we suggest that a reasonable approach to political normativity should adopt a “moral view” (i.e., the view that political normativity is not independent of moral normativity) and investigate two such approaches: the so‐called “filter approach” and the “role approach.” Although still much in need of further development in political theory, both of them bear promise as accounts which preserve the distinctness of the political domain while acknowledging its status as a moral kind.

Political realists’ rejection of the so-called ‘ethics first’ approach of political moralists (mainstream liberals), has raised concerns about their own source of normativity. Some realists have responded to such concerns by theorizing a distinctively political normativity. According to this view, politics is seen as an autonomous, independent domain with its own evaluative standards. Therefore, it is in this source, rather than in some moral values ‘outside’ of this domain, that normative justification should be sought when theorizing justice, democracy, political legitimacy, and the like. For realists the question about a distinctively political normativity is important, because they take the fact that politics is a distinct affair to have severe consequences for both how to approach the subject matter as such and for which principles and values can be justified. Still, realists have had a hard time clarifying what this distinctively political normativity consists of and why, more precisely, it matters. The aim of this paper is to take some further steps in answering these questions. We argue that realists have the choice of committing themselves to one of two coherent notions of distinctively political normativity: one that is independent of moral values, where political normativity is taken to be a kind of instrumental normativity; another where the distinctness still retains a justificatory dependence on moral values. We argue that the former notion is unattractive since the costs of commitment will be too high (first claim), and that the latter notion is sound but redundant since no moralist would ever reject it (second claim). Furthermore, we end the paper by discussing what we see as the most fruitful way of approaching political and moral normativity in political theory.

Although the discussion about feasibility in political theory is still in its infancy, some important progress has been made in the last years to advance our understanding. In this paper, we intend to make a contribution to this growing literature by investigating the proper place of feasibility considerations in political theory. A motivating force behind this study is a suspicion that many presumptions made about feasibility in several current debates—such as that between practice-independence and practice-dependence, ideal and non-ideal theory, and political moralism and political realism—are too rigid and underestimate the numerous different ways in which feasibility concerns may enter into our theorizing. To chisel out this feasibility space, our aim is to suggest two metatheoretical constraints on normative political principles as intuitively plausible, the so-called ‘fitness constraint’ and the ‘functional constraint’, through which we elucidate five central aspects for determining proper feasibility constraints of an account in political theory.